44 tional Liberation Front and pro- claimed the border areas in which they operated "the Free Territory of E] Salvador." The name of their organi- zation commemorated the leader-a Communist-of a 1932 peasant upris- ing that was suppressed with a loss of life estimated at anywhere from ten to thirty thousand All but one or two hundred of the dead were ca1npesinos; that is, peasants. Salvadorans refer to the 1932 events as la lnatanza- "the slaughter." Throughout 1980, a new nlatanza was taking place. As the year went on, the number of dead rose to an average of a thousand a month. Some were undoubtedly killed by the guerrillas and leftist urban terrorists, but the overwhelming majority-students, teachers, union organizers, lay reli- gious workers, land-reform techni- cians, members of the popular organi- zations of peasants and workers, mem- bers of their families, suspects, and Innocent bystanders-were victims of the security forces, the death squads, and, to a lesser extent, the Army. The bodies were often dismembered and otherwise mutilated, and bore the marks of torture. Many of the women were raped before being murdered. Five weeks after the event, the Rever- end Earl Gallagher, a Catholic mis- sionary from Brooklyn, reported that in May, 1980, six hundred unarmed peasants, most of them women and children, had been killed as they tried to flee across the Sumpul River into Honduras, and that Honduran as well as Salvadoran troops had taken part in the massacre. The Salvadoran govern- ment at first denied the report, but later conceded that a hundred and thirty-five people had died in the in- cident. In November, troops surrounded a school in which the leaders of the Democratic Revolutionary Front were meeting. Masked men in civilian clothing, either police or hired assas- sins, entered the building and abducted at gunpoint six of the front's lead- e_rs, including its chairman, Enrique Alvarez Córdova, who had been the Minister of Agriculture in the govern- ment of the first junta. Their bodies were found the next day. Álvarez Cór- dova was known as a "good" oligarch, who had given his hacienda to his wor kers to run as a coöperati ve in 1973. In December, four American women-two Maryknoll nuns, Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke; an Ursu- line, Sister Dorothy Kazel; and a lay worker, Jean Donovan-were mur- dered. There were reports that they had been taken from their van at a government roadblock and then shot in the head. By that time, twelve priests and a seminarian had also been murdered. President Carter suspended mili tary and economic aid to El Sal- vador and later dispatched agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist the Salvadoran police in what- ever efforts they might be making to find the killers. On December 13th, Duarte, who had made a trip to Washington a couple of weeks earlier, was named as the president of the junta-a new title -and Colonel Gutiérrez, one of the leaders of the coup that overthrew Ro- mero, as its vice-president. "This is an important historic step," Duarte said. "The government has been given to the civilians." Majano, the other coup leader, was dismissed from the junta. He had been regarded as its most mod- erate member and had sought negotia- tions with the left. I was told on good authority that Duarte's elevation had been insisted on by Washington, which wanted a civilian head of state, even if, as events were to demonstrate, his powers would be limited. As the need for arms and other aid increased, so did the influence of the United States, and Gutiérrez, García, and other senior officers reluctantly agreed. On January 3rd of this year, two American land-reform advisers, Michael P. Hammer and Mark David Pearlman, and the head of the Insti- tute of Agrarian Transformation, José Rodolfo Viera, were shot dead in the coffee shop of the Sheraton Hote] in San Salvador. By then, the Democrat- ic Revolutionary Front and the F arabundo Martí National Liberation Front had begun to coördinate their strategy. On January 10th, a rebel broadcast announced that the "final offensive" had begun. F ermán Cien- fuegos, one of the guerrilla leaders, had declared late in December, "I think Mr. Reagan will find an irre- versible situation in El Salvador by . . JUNE 22, 1981 the time he reaches the Presidency." In its last days in office, the Carter Administration authorized the ship- ment to El Salvador of five million dollars' worth of "nonlethal" military supplies, such as uniforms, radios, and trucks. Four days before leaving office Carter authorized five million dollars worth of "lethal" military assistance -combat equipment that included helicopters, grenade launchers, M -16 rifles, and ammunition-to match what it described as "a substantial quantity of lethal weapons" being provided to the guerrillas by Cuba "and other Communist nations." When the guerrillas attacked, they briefly seized a radio station in San Salvador and fought their way into several district towns-as in the T et offensive in South Vietnam in Janu- ary, 1968-but the general strike and the popular uprising they had hoped for did not occur. Within two weeks, the fighting had died away and the guerrillas had slipped back into the hills. T HE Reagan Administration, which by then had taken office, said there would be no more waffling. It was going to "draw the line" in El Salvador against what it described as calculated Soviet and Cuban "in- terventionist activity ." Work began on a comprehensive program of military and economic aid to the Duarte gov- ernment. Ambassador Robert E. White, a career diplomat, who had urged Washington to try to promote a negotiated settlement of the conflict, was dismissed from his post and forced to retire. Duarte said that the guerril- las had been beaten and that he pre- ferred economic to military aid. "It is of no use to have the greatest and best army in the world if the people are dy- ing from hunger," he said. The Pentagon disagreed. There was little chance of permanently suppress- ing the guerrillas, it said, without bet- ter equipment and training. In Octo- ber of 1980, the Carter Administration had sent five officers to help the Salvadoran general staff, and in Janu- ary it had sent twelve officers and en- listed men-instructors and mechanics -with the helicopters. Under Rea- gan the size of the military group has increased to fifty-six, including fifteen members of the Special Forces. Since they would not be accompanying their students into battle, the Pentagon pointed out, they were "trainers" or "instructors," rather than "advisers" -a term that awakened unpleasant